25-Feb-16: The martyrs of Indonesia

Outside the coffee shop where the January 2016 Islamist terror attacks were

launched in Jakarta, Indonesia [Image Source]

According to a Reuters report today, the Australian government published a travel advisory yesterday. Here's the text of the warning:

Advice levels | Indonesia overall, exercise a high degree of caution | Central Sulawesi, Papua and West Papua provinces , reconsider your need to travel | Conditions can change suddenly... Latest advice, 25 Feb 2016 | Recent indications suggest that terrorists may be in the advanced stages of preparing attacks in Indonesia (see Safety and Security). The overall level of advice has not changed... We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia, including Bali, at this time due to the high threat of terrorist attack... The Indonesian Government has recently increased security across Indonesia, which underscores the ongoing high threat of a terrorist attack.

Reuters adds that the Australian foreign ministry (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) "did not respond to a request for more details".

It also notes that a similar statement was issued from the same Australian source this past Sunday, warning of the possibility of attacks in and around Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That advisory was followed soon after by warnings of a similar nature from the diplomatic missions of the UK, New Zealand and Canada, among others.

As the Australian warning notes, Indonesia mounted an ongoing counter-attack on what Reuters terms "suspected militants" in the wake of a major terror attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, last month. We reported on that here ["14-Jan-16: In Indonesia's capital, a mall and a Starbucks now under terror attack"]

Australian tourism to Indonesia is a big deal:

Last year, 1.1 million Aussies travelled to Indonesia, and predominantly Bali, generating over $53 million in visa fees alone. As the biggest source of visitors to Bali... [Source]

With a total Australian population of 23.1 million, those 1.1 million Aussie visitors to Indonesia in 2015 alone amount to nearly 5% of the country's population in a single year. A serious warning about terrorism is clearly going to make serious waves.

It is also likely to fall on receptive ears: Indonesia's deadliest terror attack far happened in 2002 when more than 200 people including some 88 Australians were killed in three terrorist bomb attacks in Bali. Members of an Islamist terror group, Jemaah Islamiyeh, were subsequently convicted. We posted about it here and published an open letter to the Australian victims in several newspapers at the time and in later years [link]. Australians are well-prepared to know about the dangers.

Perhaps because of the sensitivity that comes from our Australian background, we have posted in this blog a number of times in the past decade about terrorism in Indonesia [click "Indonesia"], and not always with the greatest of admiration. Indonesian Islamists have notably escaped punishment from the country's legal authorities ["17-Nov-06: Indonesia Shows the Way in Fearlessly Combatting Religion-Based Terror"], for instance, a matter largely ignored in the current political environment.

Indonesia is challenged by terror in ways that many other countries are not. To start with, it's home to the world’s largest population of Muslims. And as a survey last month in Time Magazine shows, this has consequences:

Indonesia finds itself facing a new threat. There are 22 local groups who have pledged allegiance to ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even though the state officially banned ISIS in 2014, the groups have yet to face any legal challenge to their dissemination of propaganda, gathering of funds or recruitment of Indonesians... After the 2002 attacks in Bali, Indonesia’s government formed Detachment 88, a U.S.-trained counterterrorism unit, which became the country’s greatest asset in dismantling and deradicalizing the JI and al-Qaeda-affiliated networks between 2002 till now.
“Detachment 88 hunted terrorists, then killed or rehabilitated them,” says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore... Today, ISIS has taken over the space in Indonesia once dominated by [Jemaah Islamiyeh] and al-Qaeda affiliates, says Gunaratna. Many of their followers have defected to ISIS... Gunaratna attributes ISIS’s online propaganda as a powerful recruitment tool, saying that out of the 3,000 pro-ISIS social media sites in Southeast Asia, over 70% of them originate from Indonesia. Furthermore, in the past two years, over 600 Indonesians are believed to have traveled to ISIS-held territories in the Middle East, compared with the 400 JI militants who trained with al-Qaeda in the space of 10 years. That’s still only 600 in a country of 200 million, and support for the group is limited “to a fringe of a radical fringe” of Indonesian Muslims, says a report on ISIS in the country by the Institute of Policy Analysis of Conflict. But even a handful of militants can still stage significant atrocities, as Indonesians saw once again this week... To fight the rapidly growing threat of ISIS, [Gunaratna] says Indonesia will have to double the numbers of Detachment 88, criminalize ISIS-affiliated groups and counter the propaganda on the web. Both it, and the world, are facing a truly global threat... ["Indonesia’s Long Battle With Islamic Extremism Could Be About to Get Tougher", Tara John, TIME, January 14, 2016]

To our Israeli ears, the understanding and anti-terror solidarity in that TIME report are a dream. The non-stop efforts made by the authorities here in Israel where, to borrow TIME's description of Indonesia, we face threats with numbers inflicting significant atrocities and so on, attract a very different media tone. Imagine a report praising Israel for hunting and then killing/rehabilitating the terrorists.

Regular readers who saw the post we published here yesterday ["24-Feb-16: Incitement and its harvest: What the numbers do and don't tell"] don't need reminding that the malevolent and growing role played by the Islamists of Hamas gets downplayed, even ignored, by outsiders looking in. This ought to be surprising given the very open way the Hamas insiders have articulated their plans for Israelis and Jews over the years.

Yet even today, knowing what we know about the savagery they practice against their own people and that they endlessly threaten and try against ours, there remain relatively respectable voices out there calling for a different, more open approach to the barbarians:

Former British prime minister and former Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said that dialogue with Hamas was "worth trying" in the hope of unifying the Palestinian leadership and stressed that the terror group's stance on Israel could be changed... ["Tony Blair: Dialogue with Hamas 'worth trying'", i24news, December 11, 2015] 

for instance, and

This morning, Carter demanded recognition of Hamas’ “legitimacy as a political actor”. He did so on the grounds that Hamas “represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people”. He did not suggest that Hamas should lay down its weapons or indicate any interest in peace before being granted such recognition. Rather, recognition would “begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.” ["Jimmy Carter Calls For Recognizing Hamas "Legitimacy"", Forbes, August 6, 2014]

If there are people calling for greater understanding of the Indonesian jihadists, of how it's "worth trying" to dialogue with them, of their being "legitimate actors", of how the murder-and-mayhem strategy behind these latest travel advisories can be changed, we're not hearing them. We wonder if anyone else is.

The Australian news media often give Israel's robust response to jihadist terror, particularly the kind emanating from Hamas and Fatah, hostile coverage. How fair are they when we compare that coverage with how they depict Indonesia, their huge and hulking northern neighbour?

Consider the following report from Australia's government-owned ABC a week ago ["Jakarta mosques, schools linked to Islamist terror group as Indonesia struggles to contain radicals", ABC News, January 18, 2016]. It starts this way:

A number of Indonesian mosques and schools, including in the capital Jakarta, are being used to preach the hardline Islamic State doctrine and recruit new supporters. 7.30 [an astute and very watchable ABC Television current affairs program] has been told of five Jakarta mosques where Islamic State dogma is preached and where fighters are recruited. The Indonesian Government has banned dozens of IS websites, and promised to crack down on extremist teachings at schools. But anti-terrorism laws remain weak, and authorities are losing the battle against Islamic State recruitment.
Down a winding dirt road in Subang, West Java, sits a simple, no-frills Islamic boarding school with a deeply disturbing history. At least three of the terrorists involved in last month's attack in central Jakarta can be linked to the school...

And on it goes, describing the quiet growth of murderous extremism in the villages of the world's largest Moslem state. And clearly taking a stand: the terror needs to be blunted while the overtaxed right-minded Indonesian government "struggles" to "contain" the threat. The word "martyr", to describe the Islamists, appears exactly zero times.

Now imagine that instead of Indonesia, they were describing Gaza and the areas occupied by the PA/Fatah.

A report like that, if it ever went to air, would have to acknowledge that, unlike the authorities in Jakarta, the people who rule Gaza don't pretend to be against educating children to become killers and jihadists. Instead, they run huge programs to achieve just that.

And unlike in Indonesia, there is no need for investigative reporters to lurk around Gaza and try to dig up evidence of a handful of mosques and prayer halls where preachers issuing blood-curdling cries for knifings, shootings and rammings, because these, unlike in Indonesia, are a daily event in Gaza. Fresh video clips testify to this all over the web. And many of the Gaza and PA clerics doing the incitement are not outlaws but salaried government officials. Indonesia has "anti-terrorism laws [that] remain weak". But in Gaza, the laws (consider the Hamas constitution) call for terrorism; they justify it and elaborate on the different ways it ought to be done. And in the PA, if you are convicted on terrorism charges by the Israelis, you get a pension under their laws and become entitled as a matter of law to extremely generous rewards when you get out of prison.

The facts on the ground in terrorism-rich Indonesia are similar to those in terrorism-addicted Gaza and the PA-ruled West Bank except that (a) there is much more of it here compared with Indonesia, and (b) most reporters and their editors make bones about not viewing the Israelis, engaged daily in efforts to suppress a wave of daily murders and maimings, as being in a struggle.

As far as we can tell, no one in any part of the respectable news-reporting media ever calls the Indonesian bombers "martyrs".

Sitting here in Jerusalem, the lack of sympathy and the patent hypocrisy in major parts of the mainstream media are elements of a daily, obvious and painful reality.

11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising

Mutual admiration society: Hamas' Haniye, Turkey's Erdogan
[Image Source]

It was always clear that the release of 1,027 convicted and imprisoned Arab terrorists from Israeli jails in the ill-conceived Shalit Deal would lead to, and has in fact caused, the deaths of numerous innocent Israeli victims.

What is less clear even now is the enabling role provided by certain countries in empowering a cohort of Shalit Deal graduates to emerge as key figures in a campaign of anti-Israel terrorism by remote control. The note below focuses on just four: Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Malaysia.

A small flurry of media attention in the past day indicates that the worst of the deadly consequences of the 2011 Shalit Deal are still ahead:

Palestinian prisoners released and deported to Gaza, Turkey, and Qatar as part of the Shalit deal are organizing their own terrorist cells in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a report on Thursday. The deported prisoners, who are members of Hamas’ military wing, are providing guidance and funds to these cells, Hamas sources told Ynet...  The operation is being run by senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, who is based in Turkey... The exiled Hamas members also have created their own cells in the West Bank to incite, protest and clash with Israeli security forces... The sources said, according to the report, that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is pushing for suicide bomb attacks to be carried out in the West Bank and east Jerusalem...  Israeli officials are convinced that Hamas will make every effort to execute a large-scale attack by using whatever means are available to its men in the field. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in Hamas' political bureau, told an Islamist-affiliated web site in Gaza in October that he was hopeful the current violence would escalate into "an armed intifada." ["Freed Hamas prisoners from Schalit deal forming independent terror cells, says report", Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2015]

Al-Zahar, Hamas foreign minister [Image Source: Reuters]

(We would add that Mahmoud al-Zahar, mentioned above, is more than just a senior Hamas figure. He's usually identified as Hamas' foreign minister in the media. Not being part of Hamas' armed "wing" doesn't prevent him from saying he is hopeful the violence now happening here daily will evolve into "an armed intifada".)

Quoted in the little-noticed Jerusalem Post article, the Ynet report written by Elior Levy, describes a shadow organization, largely independent of both Fatah and Hamas and with an intense focus on doing terror. Members of its leadership, taking advantage of the unjustified freedom handed to them via the government of Israel and the extortion made possible by the Shalit transaction

are using the connections they made in the villages and cities of the West Bank and East Jerusalem before they were arrested. They each operate separately, working with a contact in the territories, each in a different area. The expelled prisoners provide their contacts in the territories with funding and guidance, while the contacts form the cells. The fact the communication between the expelled prisoners and their contact in the West Bank is done directly makes these military cells decentralized and compartmentalized. These operations are led and financed by the head of the Hamas military wing's West Bank Division, Saleh al-Arouri, who is located in Turkey... According to the Hamas source, an escalation of the situation in the West Bank will provide the terror organization with a way out of the crisis it faces in the Gaza Strip. [Ynet, December 10, 2015] 

This emerging branch of Palestinian Arab terror has been evident for some time. The existence of an amorphous terror structure operating from Judea and Samaria and led by released Palestinian Arab prisoners was documented this past summer in a monograph [here] published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, directed by Dr. Reuven Erlich (it's often called ITIC). The report focuses on three men, all sentenced by Israeli courts to long prison terms for terror, all freed and all currently engaged in plotting fresh murders from the safety of other countries. Two were released in the Shalit Deal; the third was released from prison in 2010 and took an active, perhaps key, role in the Shalit negotiations.

• Turkey-based Saleh Mohammed Suleiman Al-Arouri is a founder of Hamas' so-called military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He spent 18 years behind Israeli bars until being freed in the year before the Shalit Deal. He was then deported to Jordan, moving on from there to Syria from where he had a hand in the Shalit negotiations. When Hamas abandoned Damascus, he moved on to Turkey. He's based there now as the person in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. He's also a member of the Hamas political bureau. He claimed credit in a public speech last year [here] for the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens. (Hamas' strategy of having ostensibly separate political and military "wings" aims to shield its terror-spouting leaders from from responsibility for Hamas terrorism - a shabby form of plausible deniability that confers fig-leaf protection for reporters and politicians seeking a cost-free engagement with the blood-lusting Islamist terrorists.) 
• Hussam Atef Badran, released in the Shalit Deal, living and operating freely in Qatar from where he often appears in global news media as Hamas spokesman. An Islamist terror insider, he has responsibilities in the fields of terrorist network management and recruitment in Judea and Samaria. ITIC says he also spends terror-related time in Turkey.
• Ahmed al-Najjar, convicted for the terror-related shooting murders of six Israelis, was also released in the 2011 Shalit Deal. He holds US citizenship, according to ITIC quoting an Arabic-language report from March 19, 2011 on the amin.org site, shortly before being let loose. Deported to the Gaza Strip, he moved on to Jordan from where he oversees terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria. The murder of Malachi Rosenfeld in July 2015 ["19-Aug-15: The road to Malachi's death and the decisions that made it possible"] is one of them. 

Hussam Badran, Hamas's Qatar-based spokesman, appearing on
Turkey's TRT television, June 2014 [Image Source]

Many of our readers live in countries that have ongoing diplomatic and friendly ties with the states that host these terrorists and their operations. ITIC describes how those states play an invaluable role in anti-Israel terror:

Communication between the handlers and the operatives in Judea and Samaria is mainly by phone or via the Internet. Money transfers are performed by utilizing people who hold an entry permit into Israel (for example, for medical treatment) and the Palestinian Authority. In some cases, meetings are held outside Judea and Samaria by means of a courier who goes abroad. In the ITIC’s assessment, Turkey and Jordan are the two countries of choice for these meetings. This is due to their geographical proximity to Judea and Samaria and the relative ease with which one can create a suitable cover story in order to travel to them. [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 7]

Turkey also provides a congenial setting for field training of freshly-recruited terrorists

Saleh al-Arouri and additional operatives at the military headquarters in Turkey are also engaged in training operatives recruited by Hamas. Some of the terrorist operatives exposed in Judea and Samaria in August and September 2014 had received training in Turkey on planning military operations and methods for carrying out attacks against targets in Israeli territory, in Judea and Samaria, and abroad. After completing their military training, the recruits were given various tasks and assigned to squads by senior Hamas officials in Turkey... [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 11]

We noted in a blog post a year ago ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] that several bloody attacks - along with even more that were thwarted thanks to good Israeli intelligence - would probably have been labeled "lone wolf" terrorism if not for the now-exposed role, mostly ignored outside Israel, of these terror manipulators working unhindered from Jordan, Qatar and Turkey.

And before anyone makes holiday plans for Turkey in particular, here's a reminder of some thoughts we shared here some months ago? ["25-Feb-15: Talking Turkey on terror"]

ITIC has collected evidence that Malaysia provides the Hamas terrorists with covert support (though Malaysian sources deny this), partly based on things the Shin Bet has said. Wasim Qawasmeh, a resident of Hebron and one of numerous Qawasmehs to be mentioned in this blog over the years for their passion for murdering Jews, was recruited by Hamas in Malaysia [details here], as were numerous other Palestinian Arabs studying there. Other reports have mentioned Palestinian Arabs having undergone hang glider training in Malaysia, intended to be applied to terrorist attacks against Israelis.

When we wrote about Malaysia here some months back ["28-Apr-15: In Malaysia, years of anti-semitic exhortations along the path to anti-Israel terror"] we referred to the nauseating incitement that has emanated at intervals from the country's prominent, though it has to be said somewhat bizarre, former leader Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He was his country's prime minister for 22 years between 1981 and 2002:

"I am glad to be labelled anti-Semitic... How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies..."

And this from Mahathir's speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003, published in The Malaysian Insider:

"[T]he Nazis killed six million Jews out of 12 million (during the Holocaust). But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them"... adding this time that any sympathy accorded to the victims of the Holocaust was "wasted and misplaced".

Worth noting that Malaysia currently occupies one of the non-permanent-member seats on the
United Nations Security Council.

We plan to come back to the roles of Jordan and Qatar shortly.

28-Apr-15: In Malaysia, years of antisemitic exhortations along the path to anti-Israel terror

"Glad to be labeled anti-semitic": Malaysia's longest-serving 

political leader Mahathir Mohamad demonstrating characteristic

chumminess in Kuala Lumpur two years ago with Hamas 

arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal [Image Source]

Israel's Shin Bet internal security service is said - according to an expose published today on the Haaretz English-language news site - to have publicly revealed detailed evidence of terrorism-centred activities by the loathsome Hamas jihadists in far-off Malaysia. [Source: "Shin Bet: Hamas training Palestinian students in Malaysia" | Haaretz | April 28, 2015]

Among the allegations:

• Hamas is taking Palestinian Arabs to Malaysia for training as 'operatives' (meaning terrorists). On their return, these people are to carry out undercover operations in the West Bank.
• A Palestinian Arab from Hebron, Waseem Qawasmeh, 24, is on trial in an IDF military court, charged with membership of a banned organization, with having contact with the enemy and receiving money from the enemy. He was arrested on February 13 at the Allenby Bridge which crosses the Jordan River, providing a road connection between the Hashemite Kingdom and the areas controlled by the Mahmoud Abbas-controlled PA. He had just returned from Malaysia, as well as having spent part of his training period in Hamas-friendly Turkey. The indictment papers were filed with the court on March 18, according to the Haaretz article and form the basis of its expose.
• Senior Hamas officials including Ma'an Hatib and Radwan al-Atrash, live in Malaysia and took part in the events giving rise to the indictment. The Shin Bet says Hatib is "responsible in Malaysia for the Hamas foreign desk", while the well-named Atrash is "a senior figure" in its Shura Council, a religion-connected body that includes Islamist figures tied to Hamas.
• Part of the terrorism prep training involves pushing the Pal Arab jihadism cadets into joining the Malaysian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and getting involved with pro-Palestinian charities active in that country.
• Among their missions, these recruits then serve as courier/messengers between the PA-controlled areas and third countries, as well as being involved with clandestine transfers of funds to serve the Hamas terror organization's requirements.

Malaysia has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Support for Hamas and its overt embrace of terror has been part of its political figures' public declarations for years. The current prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, visited the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in January 2013.

Malaysia's Jewish population, always a tiny number, has shrunk further in the wake of years of vile, fully-open Jew-hatred spouted from the country's highest political echelons. A 2012 article in Canada's National Post ["Anti-Semitism without Jews in Malaysia"] notes that Malaysia's

politicians and civil servants devote a surprising amount of time to thinking about Israel, 7,612 km away. Sometimes they appear to be obsessed by it. Malaysia has never had a dispute with Israel, but the government encourages the citizens to hate Israel and also to hate Jews whether they are Israelis or not. Few Malaysians have laid eyes on a Jew; the tiny Jewish community emigrated decades ago. Nevertheless, Malaysia has become an example of a phenomenon called “Anti-Semitism without Jews.” Last March, for instance, the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department sent out an official sermon to be read in all mosques, stating that “Muslims must understand Jews are the main enemy to Muslims as proven by their egotistical behaviour and murders performed by them.” About 60% of Malaysians are Muslim. In Kuala Lumpur, it’s routine to blame the Jews for everything from economic failures to the bad press Malaysia gets in foreign (“Jewish-owned”) newspapers...

If that's an exaggeration, it's not much of one.

A Malaysian newspaper, showcasing the career of the most prominent of Malaysia's leaders, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who served as the country's prime minister for 22 years between 1981 and 2002. provides some illustrative quotes:

"I am glad to be labelled antisemitic... How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies..."

That article, published in The Malaysian Insider, refers to Mahathir's speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003:

"[T]he Nazis killed six million Jews out of 12 million (during the Holocaust). But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them"... adding this time that any sympathy accorded to the victims of the Holocaust was "wasted and misplaced".

Keep in mind Malaysia currently sits on the UN Security Council, where one of its most senior diplomats sees it having a role he bizarrely calls "constructive" in resolving a certain generations-long confrontation. See "Malaysia wants role in finding UN solution to Palestine-Israel conflict", a Malaysian news report from less than a week ago.

This might be a very good moment to review some of the thousands of Google links that pop up when you search on the term "Moderate Malaysia". Here's a fine example from 2009 among many others: "The Myth Of A Moderate Malaysia", from Forbes Magazine, in which the author addresses himself to

those scanning the globe for a Muslim-majority country that inspires neither dread nor despair [and] often alight upon Malaysia.

He explains why this optimism could be a teeny bit misplaced.

We are currently scanning the on-line Malaysian media to see how those years of foaming-at-the-mouth racist Mahathir-isms, are impacting on this latest round of made-in-Malaysia terrorism-friendly developments. Stay tuned.

06-Apr-15: Just a day in the life

Nothing obvious has happened to make the past 24 hours especially dangerous in terms of terrorist attacks. So let's assume that what we are seeing via the snippets below is a work in progress: simply a day in the life of a world falling victim to unthinkable violence of a kind most societies are ill-equipped to challenge, let alone thwart. A day among many not-so-different days.

New York

NY Daily News, April 3, 2015

NY Terror Case: Women Wanted an Active Military Role in ISIS 
Stassa Edwards | Jezebel.com | April 5, 2015

When Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui were arrested early Thursday morning at their Queens home, officers found pressure cookers, gas tanks, hand-written instructions for bomb making and jihadist pamphlets. According to the AP, Velentzas’ and Siddiqui’s arrest indicates a shift in women’s participation in “militant Islamic jihad.” Unlike women that have previously sought to join terrorist groups, Velentzas and Siddiqui had no interest in the roles traditionally reserved for women: marrying an ISIS fighter or nursing. Rather, the government alleges that the two women wanted to take active an military role by building a bomb and attacking a domestic target.

Accused bomb plotter’s husband says propane tanks were for barbecues
Beckie Strum | New York Post | April 6, 2015

The husband of accused ISIS-savage wannabe Noelle Velentzas insists she really loves America — and says building bombs made out of gas tanks, fertilizer and a pressure cooker was the very furthest thing from her mind. The 51-year-old man, who uses the admitted alias Abu Bakr, was sure the propane tanks authorities found at the home of his wife’s alleged accomplice would never have been used for explosives. “You can’t convince me that those propane tanks were going to be used for that because I know they were going to be used for barbecues,” he claimed... Velentzas did have an image of bin Laden on her phone, Abu Bakr conceded. And he admitted her political views might even “raise a few eyebrows.” But he had an explanation for all of that, too. Her admiration for the man who attacked New York City is based only on the fact that he helped the Afghans to drive out the Russians. “She doesn’t support 9/11,” the husband said... “They took two knives, which I had for more than 15 years,” he said. “They were in a box packed up. They also took two machetes I occasionally use... to clear yards and do gardening.”
...Abu Bakr said he’d never believe the accusations against his wife. “She couldn’t even hit the baby,” he said, referring to their 5-year-old daughter. “I just want people to know that’s not her . . . She never had any intentions of hurting anybody. This is her country, these are her people,” he said. "She’s a role model for women who really, really want to live as God-fearing women," Abu Bakr said proudly. "She’s passionate about her religion."

Malaysia

Malaysia detains 17 people suspected of plotting terror acts

Associated Press | April 6, 2015

Malaysian police have detained 17 suspected militants who authorities said Monday had planned to attack police stations and army camps to acquire weapons and carry out terrorist acts in Kuala Lumpur. Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said they were detained Sunday. Khalid tweeted that two of them had just returned from Syria. This brought the number of suspected supporters of the Islamic State group arrested since last year to 92, a police official said. Home Minister Zahid Hamidi said the 17, aged between 14 and 44, were planning to attack police stations and army camps to acquire weapons... Authorities also believe the suspects were trying to make bombs as police found notes on bomb-making written by Imam Samudra, an Indonesian who was convicted and executed for his role in carrying out the 2002 Bali bombings, Zahid said. The suspects included two army personnel and two students, and some of them had received militant training in Afghanistan and Indonesia's Sulawesi province... "This is a real threat and prevention measures are needed," Zahid said.

United Kingdom
Boy, 14, and girl, 16, arrested by anti-terror police
The Telegraph UK, April 5, 2015

A 14-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl have been arrested on suspicion of preparing a terror act. Counter-terrorism police detained the boy in Blackburn, Lancashire, before arresting the girl in Manchester the following day. Officers refused to say whether the case was Syria-related... The investigation is being run by the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit and the two youngsters have been bailed to May 28. The boy was arrested on Thursday after police had examined a number of electronic items, a spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said. The next day, police raided a home in Longsight, Manchester, and detained a 16-year-old girl.
Both are suspected of "engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism". The teenage girl lives with her parents and brothers in a semi detached house in Longsight. A green Nissan Micra was in the driveway of the house yesterday but no one answered the door. A next door neighbour said:" I know the girl very well and she is very nice - she goes to the school where I work. But I do not want to say anything other than they are a very nice family." Another neighbour, who also did not wish to be named, added: "There were police outside and inside the house on Friday and we did not have a clue what was going on. "The girl who was arrested has always been very pleasant to me - we have never had any problems with the family at all. "I used to see her chatting to her brothers outside in the street - they seemed just like normal kids to me." 

Kenya

Kenya Defence forces soldiers at Garissa University after the
terrorist massacre [Image Source]

Shame of slow response in 15-hour campus terror

The Nation, Kenya | April 4, 2015

The alarm... was sounded at 6 a.m. on Thursday last week. As they gathered, officers of the elite paramilitary unit were informed that a possible terrorist attack had been launched on Garissa University College... They quickly assembled their gear and got ready for deployment... But seven hours later the officers were still in Nairobi. [Our comment: Garissa is 370 km from Nairobi; driving time is about 5 hours at a normal civilized non-emergency rate.] After the long wait, the team would finally leave Wilson Airport after midday and finally enter Elgon hostel on the campus, the terrorists’ last stand, nearly 11 hours later. This was long after the killing had started and a majority of the 142 young Kenyans had been slaughtered by the extremists... On arrival in Garissa, the GSU [Wikipedia defines it as "a paramilitary wing of the Kenya Defence Forces and Kenyan Police, consisting of highly trained police officers and special forces soldiers"] team was briefed on the situation for two hours and when the ones that had travelled by road arrived, they launched the final assault on the terrorists at about 5 p.m., who they are reported to have subdued within half an hour... The Sunday Nation established that prior to the attack, local police had received intelligence of an impending attack... Four police officers were deployed at the university to provide security... Judging by security actions that preceded the attack, it was clear the government was aware of the threat, particularly targeting institutions of higher learning... On Friday, Maj-Gen (rtd) Nkaissery said: “This incident which happened today is one of those incidents which can surprise any country.” 

India

Security agencies warn of possible terror attack in Delhi

Times of India | April 5, 2015

Security agencies have alerted the Delhi Police about the possibility of [Pakistan-based] terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) carrying out a 'fidayeen' attack in the city... Asking the Delhi Police to remain on alert, the advisory said senior police officers, particularly Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCPs), should take all necessary preventive and precautionary measures in their area of jurisdiction in order to avoid any untoward incident, official sources said.

10-Feb-15: The Islamists of Gaza: Yet again preparing children to kill and be killed

Gaza: one of the flocked children [Image Source]

Many of us are not fully sensitive to the way our emotional reaction to news stories is a function of how it is reported. The tone of news articles - critical, supportive, cynical, angry, amused, whatever - is something that editors, writers and the people who write the headlines and add the pictures understand well.

Consumers of the news? Not so much.

Agence France Presse, one of the world's major packagers and syndicators of news reporting and imagery, and the oldest (founded in 1835), provides news outlets throughout the world with many of the stories they publish. From conversations, we sense that the role of the large packagers - including Reuters, Associated Press and Xinhua - is barely comprehended by end-users. But their influence, as newspapers lack the profitability and cash to employ their own reporters in the many (often troubled) locations where news is made, is vast.

So a person might think that with a heavy and growing responsibility for getting those stories right, AFP (which is still entirely owned by the French government) and the others would make efforts to present things in a balanced, objective way, free of editorializing and bias.

Which brings us to a story that AFP syndicated out to its news customers in the last 24 hours.

It's datelined Gaza, and describes systematic child abuse carried out yet again, on a colossal scale, by the thugs of certain outlawed terrorist organizations operating in dark Islamist/Moslem Brotherhood-controlled corners of the world, and the outrage from the many organizations, those with the huge budgets and the heart-rending websites and a mandate to speak for the urgent need to protect innocent children, loudly condemning the facts presented in the article.

Actually we're being sarcastic. Today's AFP report, headlined "Gaza youngsters flock to Hamas training camps", does no such thing, though the facts describe a humanitarian disaster of global significance.

(The syndicated story's title appears in different forms, and with changes to the text, in several different versions published around the world today. In Malaysian for instance it carries this headline: "Gaza conundrum with the youth: Hamas training for war or social well-being?" And as an aside: how appropriate is it, given what we know about the violent, authoritarian hand of Hamas, that this describes children flocking? How much freedom of action do the parents have under Hamas rule, let alone the school-children? The reporter surely knows the truth: she lives in Gaza from where she has worked for AFP since 2008.)

Here's how it opens:

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hatem is only 14 but has already lived through three wars with Israel. Now the young Gazan says he is making sure he'll be ready to fight in the next one. "The Israelis killed my niece last summer. Now I want to kill them," he told AFP after completing a week-long youth training camp with militants from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement. "I will become a resistance fighter," the boy said proudly during a graduation ceremony in Gaza.

If you read it through, you might notice that words like jihad, Moslem, terror, terrorist, terrorism, child-abuse, are missing. They don't appear once. The word Islamist, which is central to the facts recounted in the article, gets a single mention. But that's only because it is part of the name of the regime under whose auspices the whole disgraceful affair is being carried out.

AFP's report describes how

"17,000 youngsters... graduated late last month from two military training camps where Hamas - the de facto power in Gaza - said it was preparing the next generation to fight against Israel... With the humanitarian situation in post-war Gaza growing steadily worse, a fresh flare-up with Israel seems likely. And with many schools being used to shelter the displaced and unemployment standing at 41 percent, it was not difficult to convince youngsters to join the camps.

Alert readers might be wondering why "the humanitarian situation in post-war Gaza" is "growing steadily worse", and whether the local authorities are acting to prevent that or to exacerbate it. When the reporter says "a fresh flare-up with Israel seems likely", is this because Israel is encouraging it? Or does the Gaza regime seek to bring it on? A careful reading convey the joys of an approaching war and the passions that two camps for 17,000 children can arouse. But the logical next step - do they want war? or do they fear it? - is not taken by AFP or its reporter. Why is this? And how manipulated is the voice of a 14 year-old ("I want to kill them") like "Hatem" in a society where everything is watched and controlled?

To their (small) credit, AFP's news gatherers concede that

Hamas has been running summer camps for youngsters for years, but this week-long session was a much more serious affair. Run for the first time by militants from the Qassam Brigades, there were no "fun" sessions - and no mid-week visits to Gaza's zoo... Hamas has rushed to defend the military training... "What have we gained from 20 years of futile negotiations?"

(Hamas negotiated? When? Where? With whom? It's propaganda and nonsense. AFP knows that. Most of its readers don't.)

And right at the very bottom of the piece, it quotes a solitary voice invoking human rights from inside Gaza:

Issam Yunis, head of Gaza-based human rights group Al-Mezan, said the camps were a dangerous development in a territory where more than half of the population is under 15. "Gazan children are traumatised by the violence, so some are attracted by the military training," he said. "But the priority today should be to take care of their social and physical well-being."

The social and physical well-being of children? Now there's a subject worth exploring. But not for AFP. Those are the very last words of the news report; an opportunity to ask the worthy groups who seek the well-being of children everywhere else is lost. We're thinking of groups like UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others. 

A year ago ["15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?"] we asked here whether there is some sort of explanation for why those NGOs are silent:

If there is a reason, let them say it. It's inconceivable that they are unaware of this horror. The real story is not the military-style training and the pledges by children to die for the values of those hideous, terror-addicted Hamas insiders. It's this: where is the outrage of the civilized world? We especially want to know what UNRWA plans to do about the Hamas death-cultism. With an enormous footprint in the Gaza Strip, this has to become UNRWA's issue. Its website, the front end of the perpetual global UNRWA fund-raising, asserts this lofty set of aspirations: "We are committed to fostering the human development of Palestine refugees by helping them to: Acquire knowledge and skills; Lead long and healthy lives; Achieve decent standards of living; Enjoy human rights to the fullest possible extent." [UNRWA | Our priorities] ...[H]ow acceptable [is] it to them that six year old Gazan children (or for that matter 16 year olds) are given training in the lethal use of AK47s that are bigger than some of the children holding them [see Daily Mail UK]. Let them drop the charade and admit they have no problem with it, if that's the reality. We know the Palestinian Arab Islamists have no problem with this at all... Who is going to save these children? It certainly is not going to be Hamas and their co-conspirators.

AFP seems unwilling or unable to do it, but other parts of the mainstream media have occasionally poked gingerly at stories of massive Gazan child-abuse. For our part, and in view of our agenda, we have tried to get the issue discussed and thought about - for instance

• 5-Jul-12: Needed: Bridge over troubled Gazan waters
• 24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns
• 29-Apr-13: Hamas demonstrates importance of solid education. Stand by for vigorous response from Amnesty, UNICEF et al
• 18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions
• 3-Jul-13: Educating the next generation: an early-summer reflection on asymmetry
• 8-Oct-13: Children and their indispensable role in the conflict
• 15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?
• 27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class
• 14-Feb-14: As its children face major new threat, Hamas leadership in Gaza gears up for another crisis
• 24-Nov-14: Destroying their own children's lives is not the worst option for the terrorists. In their eyes, it may even be the best

LIFE, June 1970 [Image Source]

Something hideous is being done to the children of Gaza. Those doing it declare it's what Islam demands. As far as we can tell, Islam's adherents in other places are largely silent. This cannot be because they don't know it's happening. It cannot be that the guardians of children's rights - or human rights - don't know. Could it be they don't want to know? Or want us to understand?

What chance is there that Reuters, Associated Press and Xinhua will pick up that aspect of the story and take it where it should go by demanding meaningful responses - condemnation? fury? - from the child-rights industry? Meanwhile who are the real losers?

Perhaps the children in the famous LIFE magazine cover on the right. Reminding us that this tragic abuse of human potential is not new, it comes from June 1970, two generations ago. If they are still alive, the boys in the photograph would be in at least their mid-fifties today. What kind of life did that vaunted "new pride and unity" bestow on them? How do its contours and achievements compare with those of boys and men in other parts of the world? In Israel? Now that might be a news story worth writing and reading.

17-Jan-15: Scenes from the warzones - Saturday update

Belgium, this week [Image Source]

Athens, today: AFP reports this evening that four people ("at least") were arrested in Athens today "as part of a probe into a jihadist cell that was dismantled in Belgium this week before it could carry out any attacks" according to a Greek police source. The arrests occurred in the Pangrati district of Athens in the middle of Saturday. They think, though there seems to be some doubt, that the arrested include Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the cell planning the foiled attacks from Greece. These arrests come on top of dozens of others across Europe, in raids targetting Islamists.

Brussels, today: The BBC says uniformed soldiers were seen guarding Jewish schools and government buildings in Belgium today. Belgium's interior minister said his country "had to make use of all the forces at its disposal". The report quotes defence ministry officials saying 150 police are already in place, a figure that could double in the coming days until the situation is reviewed next week. Associated Press says they are currently protecting synagogues in Antwerp, the Jewish Museum in Brussels and other sites and include paratroopers, "the first time in 30 years that authorities used troops to reinforce police in Belgium’s cities".  Belgium's terror warning level now stands at 3, the second-highest level. Justice Minister Koen Geens said Saturday that “we hope the worst has been avoided but we need to prepare for the most difficult to come.”

London, Friday: An 18-year-old woman was arrested by anti-terror officers at Stansted Airport Friday on suspicion of terrorism offences. One British report quotes a Scotland Yard source saying she was taken to a central London police station for questioning on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and membership of a banned organisation. It said authorities were not revealing at this stage where she was travelling from. The Daily Mail UK covers the same incident, and names "A-level student Silhan Ozcelik" who was 17 when she "went missing in October", and describes her as "Kurdish teenager, from Highbury Corner, North London."

Sydney, Friday: The Daily Telegraph reports that Australian authorities deported a man described as "a former Australian factory worker... who had also breached his visa" on Wednesday, and that he was promptly arrested in Malaysia on arrival there, on suspicion of running an Australian IS terror cell. Malaysia's Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division officials were waiting for the man when he arrived at Kuala Lumpur's International Airport Friday morning.  "The terror cell was reported to consist of the man and a married Malaysian couple who were also deported, on January 7, and also arrested on arrival [back in Malaysia]. They had reportedly travelled to Australia with their 14-month-old daughter [and were] recruiting Malaysian militants and sending them to Turkey and eventually Syria via Australia."

27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class

Hamas leader Hanieyeh: From the Al-Aqsa TV coverage
of the graduation event

A January 16 ceremony took place in the terror-rich atmosphere of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip marking the graduation of several thousand high-school children from a government-imposed, paramilitary indoctrination course in which the goal of self-destruction played a central role. It would have done the North Koreans proud.

But unlike in North Korea, what took place on a sports field in Gaza was based explicitly on the values of a religion with hundreds of millions of adherents throughout the world. The Hamas satellite channel Al-Aqsa TV broadcast the ceremony throughout the Arabic speaking world where it was viewed in real-time and via recordings by a global audience. This was no mere flower show or Friday morning local sermon.

The translation team at MEMRI published the English-language text of the television coverage today. From experience, it's unlikely to get much airplay in the conventional media channels. This is a shame since watching the video [online here] and reading its transcript [here] is a sobering, shocking experience.

Viewers watching it understand, in ways that reports alone rarely convey, that what is in evidence here is a failed state in the tragic grip of a massively-intrusive religious cult consuming its own children. The hatred and zeal, the recurring calls to kill and be killed (the one evidently no less praiseworthy than the other), claim to be derived from Islam. They explicitly invoke its tenets and values.

For those of us who hold by non-Islamic belief systems, we are left again wondering where the outrage from believers in a civilized, respectful Islam is. (Perhaps not all of us. Harriet Greenwood, for instance, until this week the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, inserted into her sadly credulous April 28, 2013 profile of the Gazan Futuwwa programs a malicious and misleading comparison with Israel's compulsory post-high-school national service program.)

Something hideous is happening in Gaza. Those doing it declare it's what Islam demands. As far as we can tell, Islam's adherents in other places are largely silent. This cannot be because they don't know it's happening.

Hamas minister Fathi Hammad reminds graduating high
schoolers where to place the emphasis

Some selected extracts from MEMRI's transcript of the Al-Aqsa TV coverage of the January 16, 2014 graduation ceremony in Gaza:

• Chant: "Our utmost desire..." [Announcer] "Is death for the sake of Allah!" [Graduating children]
• "Today, 13,000 youth are graduating from the Futuwwa camps.... Remain steadfast on the path. Continue the work you began in the camps... Memorize what you have learned, and implement it in the battlefield when you meet the enemy." [Osama Al-Mazini, Hamas regime's minister of "education"] [The New York Times published some background on the Futuwwa camp phenomenon in its January 14, 2014 edition]
• "To the Zionist enemy, everywhere and at any time... You shall never enjoy a pleasant life on our beloved homeland. We... will confront you on every hill, in every valley, and on every road. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed or to leave. [A high-school student who graduated the Hamas training course]
• "Sons and brothers, you do not have much time to train. Study, conduct training, become experts and be inventive, with the help of Allah. The battle will be your battle. The Jihad will be your Jihad. Palestine is your land, Islam is your religion, and Allah is your God. The Messenger is your role model, and the Koran is your constitution. You have been planted by Allah, and therefore, you will harvest the enemies of Allah in the battle to come... We pray for Allah to choose martyrs and leaders from among you – and not only in Palestine, but throughout planet Earth, so that the call for Jihad will be spread all over the world, and the entire world will embrace the religion of Allah." [Fathi Hammad, Hamas regime's minister of interior. Note that when his own child needed the best possible medical care in April 2010, he had little hesitation in getting her across the border into an Israeli children's hospital ward. Though her life was saved there following a botched medical procedure in Gaza, he carefully avoid any mention of Israel when later thanking those responsible for the act of salvation.]
• "These words, which we memorize well, are uttered by the martyr who ascends to Allah. We are the vanguard to be joined by Arab and Islamic armies – from Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Egypt, and from every country that turns towards Jerusalem to liberate it." [Announcer]
• "The best way for us to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday is to walk in his footsteps and provide the future generations a Jihadi education. We shall walk in his footsteps in educating the future generation to love death for the sake of Allah as much as our enemies love life... This is the generation of stone, the generation of the missile, the generation of tunnels, and the generation of martyrdom operations.... I call upon my brothers, I call upon the education minister, the minister of the interior, the Al-Qassam Brigades, and the national security agencies to open courses in the Futuwwa camps for girls too..." [Ismail Hanieyeh, Hamas prime minister and another Hamas insider who has had no hesitation in sending sick family members to the best-available Israeli doctors and Israeli hospitals]

Minister Hammad delivers a theological/educational message

High schoolers show the message was delivered

22-Jan-13: Malaysian prime minister feels like "one nation" with the terrorists of Gaza

Malaysia's PM grips fist of Hamas arch-terrorist - and says
he's 'happy' [Image Source]

Reuters is reporting this afternoon on an official visit to the Gaza Strip by Malaysia's prime minister. The Reuters report calls it part of "a diplomatic push by Gaza's Islamist rulers" without mentioning that this is only the second time ever that a head of state has paid obeisance to the terrorist clique in control of the Gaza Strip. The first was when the owner emir of Qatar came for four hours in November 2012.

Though they don't say it, most journalists know that more circumspect political figures have avoided setting foot there lest they be politically damaged by the vile odor emanating from the bloodstained involvement of the Hamas leadership in mass killings of their fellow Palestinian Arabs, and of Israeli children, women and men.

Not so Mr Muhammad Najib Abdul Razak.

Malaysia's top politician, accompanied by his wife and foreign minister, crossed over from Egypt to Rafah for a ten-hour visit today that appears to have gone without a hitch. The drama, if any exists, comes from the suggestion by Saleh Salem, the writer who authored the news report for Reuters, that today's visit somehow "defied Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip" (his words).

Blockade-busting? It's an odd characterization for a serious global newsagency to reach for. Are we being invited to imagine him and his first lady in frogman's outfits scuba-diving their way to the Gaza shore?

For the benefit of the Reuters editors in far-off London, we will point out that Gaza has a border with Egypt, and a gate in the Rafah Crossing that is not controlled by Israel. Egypt sometimes, presumably for good reasons, has imposed restrictions on incomings and outgoings. Does that qualify as an "Israeli blockade"? Qatar's Al-Thani drove through it with an equally small degree of drama at the start of his visit two months ago.

A Malaysian news report describes in lurid detail how this afternoon's blockade busting went:

Travelling by land from El Arish International Airport in Egypt near the Gaza border, Najib and Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor went to the border crossing at Rafah and entered a holding room while waiting to have their passports to be processed. After their passports were processed they entered the Gaza side and were met by Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh.

On today's agenda: laying a foundation stone for new office premises to house "the Palestinian Prime Minister's office". (The Malaysian report seems to overlook the existence of two different Palestinian prime ministers; we assume Salam Fayyad of Ramallah is not the kind to take it personally.) He also got an honorary doctorate from Al-Aqsa University; a Malaysian report says his acceptance speech included the disclosure that "some people were unhappy with his visit to Gaza". Nevertheless:

"I decided to follow my heart. and my heart says I should be with the Palestinian people."

Reuters story says the Malaysian party paid their respects to

the family of top Hamas military chief Ahmed Al-Jaabari, whose assassination by Israel in November started an eight-day war in which more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis died.

without mentioning a word of Jaabari's direct responsibility for the "deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians" [Wikipedia] or the senior management role this "military chief" took took in "coordinating" the collection of charity money for Hamas and the spending of that cash on terrorist activities [Haaretz].

So where do the Malaysians stand on the fight to stop terrrorism? Answer: side by side with the child-killers. Here's a direct quote from the Palestinian Maan News coverage of Abdul Razak's speech:

"We may be far from you in distance, but we are one nation and believe in the struggle of the Palestinian people... 

Here's what his host, the arch-terrorist and head of the Hamas regime, Ismail Haniyeh, said in response:

"Haniyeh said the [Malaysian's] trip was a response to a visit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made to the Western Wall in Jerusalem after casting his vote in the election. The Hamas leader said the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest existing prayer site, was "a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic Wall" and Jerusalem was an "an Islamic, Arab and Palestinian city."

Unlike the smooth talking Malaysian, there are some serious nations that see through the Hamas "struggle of the Palestinian people" rhetoric. Which of them designate Hamas as a terrorist organization? Currently, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Canada, Israel and Japan; Australia goes part of the way, banning Hamas' "military" division. This diplomatic boycott by Western countries of Hamas is because of "its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, honor past Israeli-Palestinian agreements, and renounce violence" [Haaretz].

It's encouraging to see there are Malaysian voices quite outraged by Muhammad Najib Abdul Razak's kowtowing visit to the baby-killers of Gaza. Click here to view an example in the Malaysian language, which is published under an English-language headline "Shame on you, Najib!!". Thanks to Google Translate, here is a brief excerpt from that Malaysian message:

"People of this country also need to be convinced that this country will never cooperate with terrorists like Hamas as did the Najib administration. We will not elect a government that collaborate with terrorists who kill children and innocent people in Israel."

Warms the heart.